17
COVER
STORY
In June last year, for instance,
Year 6 pupils at Mount Martha Primary
School in Victoria staged a protest on their
school oval after they were banned from
hugging or giving each other high-fives.
Their parents were right behind them.
In August Sydney's Drummoyne Primary
School ban ned children from doing handstands,
cartwheels and somersaults during lunch and
recess, unless supervised by a trained gymnastics
teacher. An outraged parent started a petition
of protest. Principal Gail Charlier defended the
ba n, saying it followed con sultation with the
Depa rtment of Education State Schools Sports
Unit, without going into specifics.
In November Amber Rome, a student at Adam
Road Primary School in Bunbury, south of Perth,
made the news for being given detention because
she gave her friend a quick hug after the school bell
ra ng, violating the school's no-hugging policy,
introduced in 2011. The Western Australian
Education Department confir med the policy,
stating that excessive hugging 'left some students
with bruises and others feeling left out', but after
a hue and cry from parents the school overturned
the rule, relying instead on common sense.
While they make good headlines and the
policies implemented by pa rticula r schools may
be clumsy responses to perceived risks, what the
media has not acknowledged is that schools, now,
are not the same environments commentators
may have grown up in. Principals and staff
are increasingly being required to develop
compliance and risk management policies and
procedures without any particular expertise in
this area.
The potential risks and compliance obligations
for schools are growing. Over a generation schools
have obser ved the increase in health and safety
issues for students, from a rise in the occurrence
The
pervasiveness
of social media
and the use
by students
for bullying
increases the
complexity
involved
for schools
attempting to
manage it.
Recent popular media debate about schools banning
seemingly innocuous schoolyard activities like students
hugging and cartwheels in the playground creates
headlines, making these school policies appear extreme
resulting in a generation of "cotton wool kids".
BY DENISE MCNABB AND NAOMI BURLEY
Putting the ruler over
schools' duty of care